


The Nightmare

by MundaneExMiscellanea



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-12 20:40:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4493979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MundaneExMiscellanea/pseuds/MundaneExMiscellanea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A reimaging of the Nightmare chapter of “Here Lies the Abyss” set in a canon-divergent AU in which Samson, not Corypheus, confronts the Herald at Haven, and the Hero of Ferelden accompanies the Inquisition to Adamant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Hero of Ferelden

 When she looked up, the newly crowned queen stood above her, smiling benevolently. This didn’t seem right, but then again it had been a long time since anything did. Neria stood at the foot of the dais, where she’d just received the Queen’s promise to liberate the Ferelden Circle of Magi. The First Enchanter and Wynne, Leliana and Zevran, Sten, Oghren, even her dog, together with gathered nobles and allied representatives, all filled the hall behind her to celebrate the Grey Warden who ended the Fifth Blight within a single year. Except Neria seemed to remember that Wynne was dead...

“Alistair Theirin,” said Anora, interrupting her thoughts with the regal volume of a queen. “Grey Warden, brother to the king. He died striking the final blow against the Blight.”

Again she saw his face, the wry smile, the love in his eyes, as she told him that she would not let him die.

_You say that as if I’m giving you a choice._

“In war, victory,” Anora said. “In peace, vigilance. In death: sacrifice. Many died this past year, but let us honor the Grey Wardens who have fallen in their battle against the relentless Blights and their inevitable return to the world.”

An elderly seneschal brought forth a number of dry, crackling vellum scrolls, which looked familiar somehow, but she couldn’t think where she might have seen them, as Denerim’s library was a ruin, and she hadn’t been to the libraries in Orlais or the Free Marches, not yet.

“Remember the Wardens: Riordan of Orlais, died fighting the archdemon in Denerim. Duncan, died at Ostagar. Elim Nivain, died at Ostagar. Quentin, died at Ostagar. Ser Jory of Redcliffe, died at Ostagar. Daveth, died at Ostagar. Rickard, died at Ostagar...”

Neria hadn’t realized how few of the Ferelden Wardens she’d met before the battle. This was the first time she'd heard their names. Behind her, the hall filled with the sound of dining, laughter, and celebration. The clink of glasses, the gentle laughter of courtiers, as the queen reached the end of the dead Wardens of Ostagar and continued beyond, including many who died during their Joining, knowledge she couldn’t possibly have. Kera Dantios, died during her Joining. Uthwin, died during his Joining. Yrrellan Theloriel, answered the Calling, journeyed to the Deep Roads. For every one that died in battle, two died during their Joining. And as the list rolled back into the long peace before the Fifth Blight, the Calling began to take its grim toll.

Died during the Joining. Answered the Calling, died in the deep roads. Died during the Joining. Answered the Calling. Joining. Calling. Calling. Calling. All the way back to the Fourth Blight, when a Warden again died to destroy an archdemon, and the Blight ended, and then came the names of all the Wardens who died to make that happen. No one died of old age.

Dead in their thousands filled Neria’s thoughts, not just Wardens, but their allies, and the innocents caught in the path of an evil they could not even understand. If they were lucky they were killed outright, if not they were dragged below…

Neria spun away from the Queen, from thoughts of the Deep Roads and of Alistair, and found herself facing an empty hall. Empty of life, and silent except for three sounds:

The Queen’s voice.

The roar of the crowd outside.

Music.

The tune didn’t seem in the right spirit for a party, didn’t have the rhythm of a dance. Neria couldn’t quite pin down its source, or its melody. She stepped down into the empty hall, Anora’s voice following her as she walked between the tables. The roaring became louder. The music became...brighter, somehow. More distinct. She could almost hum it, almost make out the story it was trying to tell.

She sang snatches of wordless song to herself as she came to the double doors. Light slipped into the dark hall through the cracks. The sun still shined outside, even if there was no life left in this place. Shaking her head to clear it of the persistent song, she pushed open the doors, and stepped into the vast cavern beyond.

Columns of rock stretched from the ceiling far overhead down into the enormous crevasse before her. Neria stepped out onto a shelf of barren rock, lit from below.

Packed in their thousands, in their tens of thousands, crowding so thickly that she would not have been able to make out individuals were it not for the ogres standing above the crowd, an army of darkspawn beyond imagining blanketed the floor of the cavern. Their fires and their torches cast a false dawn into the gloom of the Deep Roads.

“Hero of Ferelden,” said a deep voice in her mind, like lyrics accompanying the music. “Is that how you think of yourself?”

She turned slowly, seeking some sign that this was not the final madness that claimed all Wardens who lived too long. Over the roar of the horde, Neria could hear Hespith - haunted, hollow-eyed Hespith - continuing the Queen’s count of the dead in a steady, whispered chant.

“No, of course you don’t,” said the voice. “The true Hero of Ferelden was Alistair, the fool who followed. He died, unremembered, so that you could live. And you lived long enough to return here, to the Deep Roads. Did you miss it, Warden? The dark. The things lurking in it. The things people do. The things people become.”

The song reached a crescendo, and a deep bellow echoed over the screams of the horde and Hespith’s increasingly frantic chanting of the Wardens fallen during the Third Blight.

An archdemon rose from its perch and swooped over the crevasse, and the cavern shook with its passage. Neria attempted to ready a spell, but the ground beneath her feet shifted. Crumbled.

Neria twisted, scrabbling for purchase amid the shifting stones. She clawed at the rock. Several of her fingernails snagged and bent away before her hands caught a narrow ledge. Her feet kicked uselessly at the wall. Over the jeering of the horde, Hespith muttered “The Joining. The Calling. The Calling. The Calling.”

“Now Wardens conduct blood sacrifices to summon demons, to end the Blight once and for all. But Wardens have sacrificed themselves for a thousand years, and still the Blight returns, devouring the young and poisoning the land, replenishing the Horde with the bodies of those who have no place left to run.” The voice echoed in her mind, every word a swirl of melodious sound. “How many survived in Lothering, do you think? What do you think they made of them, down here in the dark?”

Neria’s right foot found a purchase, a shallow one. She pressed her toes down on it, and it didn’t give. She could feel her grip becoming slippery with blood.

“What do you think they’ll make of you?”

Gritting her teeth, Neria pushed off the ledge below and got her fingers into a new handhold. She could see another, as well, higher up, she just needed the strength, just enough strength to reach it.

“Oh, Alistair,” she whispered. “Please, Maker…”

She adjusted her grip with her right hand, then let go with her left, and the cliff let go of her in a shower of rocks and dust.

“Meaningless,” said the voice as she fell to a hymnal choir of the beautiful, chanting voices of the darkspawn. “Your sacrifice. Your love. Always meaningless. There was only ever this ending for you, this corruption and terror in the dark.”

She closed her eyes, and a hand closed around her wrist.

“I’ve got you,” said a rough voice. “Hold on.”

She looked up and for a moment couldn’t make out the face above her.

“Alistair?” she murmured. Then her vision cleared, and she saw the bearded face of Warden Blackwall.

“Hang on, Warden,” he growled. “We’ve got you. It’s all right.”

Neria looked down and saw only a long drop into the peculiar landscape of the Fade, devoid of darkspawn, of the voice. The Calling once again a muted urgency, the vaguest of melodies.

She reached up with her other hand, and Inquisitor Cadash leaned over to grab it.

On solid ground again, she leaned gratefully on the dwarf’s shoulder, breathing deeply.

“I think you dropped this,” Blackwall said, holding out her staff. She accepted it with a nod, taking in his fresh bruises and cuts without comment. Something about Blackwall reminded her of Sten. He seemed comfortable with her silences, and appreciated when she asked no questions of her own.

“Can you walk, Hero?” said Cadash. “We’re kind of in a rush.”

“I’ll manage,” Neria said. “Where are the others? Where’s Hawke?”

“We were separated when those spiders attacked,” Cadash said. “One minute everything’s fire and smashing and monster guts, the next I’m alone.”

“Spiders?” Neria said, frowning. “They looked like Shrieks to me.”

“Shrieks?” Blackwall said, confused.

“Shrieks. Darkspawn, lope on all fours, attack from stealth, disorienting scream.” Neria cocked her head, puzzled. “You've never encountered them?”

“Oh. Oh right, the darkspawn.” Blackwall shook his head. “Sorry. The Fade must be getting to me.”

“It gets worse every time I visit,” Cadash said. “We better find the others before Nightmare does something worse than fling them off a cliff.” She gestured toward the distant rift in the sky. “Shall we?”

“Lead on, Inquisitor,” Neria said.

As they stepped back onto the path, Neria could still hear Hespith chanting her litany of horrors, but that was normal, familiar, almost comforting. In her head, Neria counted with her.

 

 


	2. Dorian of House Pavus

Cadash let the last handful of dust disappear through her fingers as if blown by a wind none of them could feel, whispering words none of them could quite understand, but which seemed very important. The residual panic of the Inquisitor’s reclaimed memories faded. Mostly.

Hawke sagged against a wall of rock while the Spirit of the Divine looked on sympathetically.

“Corypheus,” Hawke murmured. “I didn’t believe it, not really. How can it be Corypheus? He’s dead.”

“Clearly he’s not,” Blackwall said. “Maybe you killed an impostor.”

“Varric?” Hawke said. “We killed him, didn’t we?”

Varric nodded, staring out into the Fade’s mottled sky.

“Dorian,” said Halward Pavus. “Come, quickly.”

Dorian looked up sharply. Other than the Spirit and his companions, there was no one else nearby. Certainly not so-called family.

“Bet you’re glad you saved us all from the Blight, aren’t you, Hero?” Cadash said.

“I was just thinking I should have conscripted Loghain and thrown him at the Blight while Alistair and I honeymooned in the Free Marches,” Warden Neria said.

“Were you really?” Blackwall said, affronted.

“Actually I was thinking that this part of the Fade is oddly pleasant,” Neria said. “Whenever I visit the Fade, everything tends to be very dark and on fire.”

“Warden, the inside of your mind must be terrifying,” Varric said.

“Dorian,” whispered a child’s voice.

“The Free Marches would have been a terrible honeymoon anyway,” Hawke said. “Visit historic Kirkwall, where the legacy of slavery is commemorated with 30-foot-tall statues and the ongoing oppression of elves and mages. View our interactive qunari exhibit! See the wonders of the Bone Pit.”

“Dorian!” hissed an urgent voice.

“Is anyone else hearing unsettling disembodied voices calling their name?” Dorian asked. Everyone stared at him. “Just me then? Oh, good.”

The Divine rose into the air, shining brightly. “Nightmare has found us,” she cried. “Go! Quickly!”

Somewhere nearby, pebbles skittered over the dreams of stone. The castaways in the Fade drew weapons, readied spells. Lighting a flame in his hand, Dorian peered into the fog behind them.

“Let’s move,” Neria said, “before-”

“Oh, Maker,” said Dorian as a figure wearing nothing but the blood pouring from its throat shambled out of the haze. It paused, eyes rolling in their sockets, long enough for Dorian to recognize it as an elf and for it to see Dorian. And then it did the worst possible thing with its blood spattered face.

It smiled.

“Gah!” Dorian cried as it lurched forward, followed closely by others. He hurled flames and lightning at the nearest and scrambled backward.

“Blackwall, rearguard!” Cadash shouted.

“Andraste’s ass, they’re everywhere,” Varric swore.

“I hate spiders,” Hawke muttered, and then Dorian couldn’t make much out beyond the sounds of struggling.

“Spiders, as well? Lovely,” Dorian said. He raised a wall of flames between himself and the nightmare creatures, backing away as they loped through, heedless and made no less horrible for being on fire. Dorian glanced back and found that he was alone. The sounds of combat seemed to have moved further up the path. He swore.

“Yes, leave the mage behind, he'll watch our backs,” he shouted as he ran to catch up. “What happened to Blackwall’s bloody rearguard?”

He skidded around the curve to find more blood-soaked horrors and no sign of his companions. He searched the sky for the glowing shape of the Divine Spirit, but everywhere the horizon revealed only more of the disturbing unreality of the Fade.

“Wonderful,” Dorian muttered. He raised a barrier to deflect the clutching of some particularly swift creatures then ran down the only available path that seemed clear, casting more fire behind him and not waiting to see if the little horrors burned.

He could no longer hear his companions, not even faintly. Soon, the wet, stumbling steps of his pursuers also faded. Dorian glanced back and could see no sign of them, no sign of anything, in fact. Even the sky had disappeared.

He seemed to be in some kind of tunnel.

“Well, Dorian,” he said. “You’re physically in the Fade, a feat achieved only once before in all of recorded history.” Dorian held his flame up, trying to pierce the gloom. “And you’ve managed to run right into some kind of fathomless pit. Marvelous. O, they shall write songs of your noble achievements.”

He prodded the ceiling with his staff. Solid. “Well, this is irritating. Nightmare, if you were guessing my fear to be claustrophobia, I’m afraid - ha! - I’m afraid you are quite mistaken.” He tossed flames behind him and shook his hand out while they stuck and grew brighter. “Still, I would give a great deal for a door.”

“Dorian,” a voice called. His father’s voice.

“Oh, very cute,” Dorian hissed. A light glinted further down the tunnel, and Dorian reluctantly approached it.

In the rough wall, a doorway stood etched in flames, and in that doorway stood his father in his Tevinter finest.

“Dorian,” Halward Pavus said. “We don’t have much time.”

“Let me guess,” Dorian said. “You’re throwing a party, and I simply must attend.”

“Dorian, you are in terrible danger,” his father said, face drawn and tired. “I am here to help you.”

“And how would you know what kind of trouble I’m in? Really, this is a very poorly conceived kind of taunt.”

“I have not yet given up hope. I am still in Ferelden.” Halward Pavus looked pained. “There are...ways to contact those one has lost. Although the price is high.”

“I’m sorry to have put you out, father,” Dorian said, archly, “but I have rather a lot to do at the moment. Demons to fight, comrades-in-arms to rescue.”

“You are the one in need of rescue, my son,” his father said. “You are no help to your Inquisitor in this place. Come through the portal. Let me help you.” Again the look of pain. “Please, my son, you must hurry.”

“Father,” he said. “What’s powering this portal?”

His father shuddered, and Dorian saw a blot of red spreading across his sleeve.

“Dorian,” he gasped. “Please.”

Dorian reflexively took a step, stopping just outside the threshold.

“No,” Dorian said quietly. Then, more forcefully, “No, Father or Nightmare or whoever. This isn't the door I am looking for. I’ll find my own way out, thanks.”

He struck his staff sharply against the ground and closed his eyes to his father’s panicked expression as lightning encircled him, crackling into an expanding bubble that filled the corridor and then pushed out with explosive force.

He opened his eyes to find himself standing in a small scorched space in an otherwise pristine and well-appointed, if slightly disorienting geometrically, study. He was surrounded by books.

Dorian turned in a slow circle, taking in the floor to ceiling shelves, so tall they required a sliding ladder, and still not enough room for all the books, judging from the stacks of volumes arranged haphazardly around the room. A large desk stood in one corner of the room, piled with still more texts, flanked by lecterns for reading outsized volumes. And there was a chair, a large, luxurious chair, with a neat pile of reading beside it.

“This is like pornography,” Dorian whispered.

“Isn’t it? I’m so glad you like it.”

He had been certain that the chair was unoccupied, but now a broad-shouldered man with long black hair sat with a book in his lap, watching Dorian with mild amusement. His loose, flowing shirt hung open, and his eyes were a piercing blue, a rare color in Tevinter.

“I know you, don’t I?” Dorian asked.

Smiling more broadly, the man pointed to the top of his head where, above the glossy black hair, he wore a pair of curving horns.

“Oh, of course,” Dorian said. “The desire demon. From my very own Harrowing. Catching up on some reading, are you?”

“Reading is one of life’s greatest pleasures, wouldn’t you agree?” the demon said. “Words are a way of bringing two minds together across great distances of time and space so that one voice can speak inside the mind of another. So intimate.”

“Mmm,” Dorian said, scanning the room for a door.

“One so seldom has the time to read anymore,” the demon sighed. “Wardens to possess, worlds to conquer, ancient Tevinter magisters to elevate to godhood...or oblivion.” He grinned. “It’s all the same to us, really.”

“Oh, part of the great demon army, I see.” Dorian cleared his throat, trying to avoid looking directly at the demon’s face. Demons shouldn’t have dimples. “You’ve certainly become ambitious.”

“As have you, my handsome boy.”

“Well, as charming as this reunion has been, I’m afraid-”

“You are afraid, and you can’t talk your way out of it, not this time.” The desire demon closed the book on its lap and stood, walking around the Tevinter mage to replace it on the shelf. “You’re trapped between worlds, in a realm of mortal terror, and you can’t simply will me away or open a door back to the waking world like before, because we’re not in your head, precious.” He leaned in close to Dorian’s ear. “We’re in mine.”

His breath smelled of the incense his mother burned when she was pretending to be religious. For a moment, Dorian closed his eyes and reality jolted, and he was surrounded again by moaning, leering, bloody corpses, being taunted by a monster. Then he was back in the library, a handsome demon watching him.

“What do you want?” Dorian said, shaken.

“What a curious thing to ask a spirit of desire,” the demon said, laughing. “Obviously I want to ride your body into the waking world and do unspeakable things with it. Just as obviously, you aren’t going to let me do that. So I’ve decided to help you. You wish to escape Nightmare’s realm? The key is where it has always been: in books.”

Dorian looked again at the vast collection of books. “All traps, I suppose.”

“No more so than any other books,” said the demon. “This is my personal collection, harvested from the dreams of dreamers across Thedas. Some of these books no longer exist in your world; some never did. There are ideas here that have never been expressed aloud. But they are all real books, Dorian. And books have the answer to your current problem. Books have all the answers you could ever want.”

Dorian walked over to the nearest shelf, fingers brushing the leather spines. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“Try the index,” the demon said dryly. Dorian followed his gesture to the large desk, on which a large volume lay open and marked with red ribbon.

The titles astonished him. Memoirs of ancient magisters. Theoretical necromantic texts by the greatest of Nevarran mortalitasi. Guides to the Fade and to spirits written by Dalish keepers and Orlesian enchanters. There was even a tome of esoteric lore that seemed to be by the ancient Elvehn, but he couldn’t follow their logic at all, and the look of frustration on his face just made Desire laugh. The allure of that laugh was appalling.

He worked as quickly as possible, skimming through works on which he desperately wanted to linger, looking for relevant texts.

There was a magister whose son became lost in dreams and was only rescued with the ritual sacrifice of a favored slave. Dorian shoved it aside.

An Orlesian enchanter, favored of the Emperor, hypothesized physical travel in the Fade to be possible, and that once within it should be possible to step from one’s own dreams to those of another. However, without access to certain entirely hypothetical artifacts belonging to the ancient elves, the only means by which to open gateways to and from the Fade would be blood magic. His books were burned by the Southern Chantry. Thinking of his “father” and his blood-soaked portal, Dorian tossed this aside as well.

There was an interesting book by a Dalish outcast about accessing the past through dreams and mirrors, and ways to navigate the physical Fade, enforcing one’s will on the collective dreamscape. She spoke as if she had been there and spoke of recent events - including the Inquisitor and the temporal experiments of poor Alexius - as if they were part of her distant past. Regardless, her solution was blood magic, and Dorian took great pleasure in the way Desire winced when the book fell to the floor. The demon recovered and toasted him with an extravagant silver goblet. Every time Dorian looked up the demon had adopted a yet more provocative pose.

Every book, by the living and the dead, by Wardens, nobles, magisters, Keepers, Rivaini seers, Chasind apostates, and Orlesian First Enchanters contained fascinating insights about the Fade, travel within it, negotiations with spirits, and accessing ancient memories. And they all seemed to agree that there was only one certain means by which to master the Fade and overcome the uncertainty that was inherent to its nature.

The power of blood.

Experimenting with blood magic was almost a rite of passage for a young mage in Tevinter, and Dorian had been no exception. It was a silly spell, powered by a pinprick, but the power of it had been thrilling. Even now thinking about it made Dorian conscious of the sheer magical power his heart was at that very moment pumping through his body. His eyes roved until they found something sharp, a small bookbinder’s blade amid the clutter on the desk.

He thought of his father finding out about the spell he’d cast. Dorian had expected anger and a lecture, but it was the disappointment that stuck with him. His father expected better of him, obviously, but he also feared for him. He feared losing his only son to the prick of a needle.

He thought of how easily the fear that moved his father to protect him had moved his father to betray his son and himself. For the sake of blood.

Dorian picked up the blade, a dream blade for edging dream books.

So much power in the blood.

So much power inside of himself.

Desire smiled at him, warm and encouraging. Dorian smiled back.  

Then he set the library on fire.

The dreams of books, it seemed, were like parched grass, the way the flames leaped from shelf to shelf like a thing alive. He flung more fire at the other wall, where it stuck and spread. Sparks swirled into the air as venerable texts crumbled.

Desire flew at him, shrieking, blasting in all directions with ice. Dorian erected a wall of flames that consumed the desk, both lecterns, and the demon. While it howled and writhed, Dorian summoned a shield of magic, took a deep breath, and plunged into the conflagration.

The library was rapidly becoming an inferno. Dorian could almost hear the words of the dying books in sighing on plumes of smoke and ash, soon to be lost forever, but he shut them out. His heart could only take so much. He saw no exit, so he looked for the place where the fire had burned most thoroughly. He prepared another lightning strike.

Desire struck him in a full-bodied tackle, and the bolt went wide. Cold spread from the demon’s grip as it pressed his face into the ground, its breath so frigid against his cheek that it snatched his breath away.

“You think you’ve won, do you, little mage?” Desire’s face had grown monstrous, half-burned away and full of rage. It flipped him over, batting his hand away and pinning his staff to the floor. “You’ve only ensured that you will waste away here in the Fade, trapped forever in fear and pain.” Its voice grew deeper, more sonorous. He could almost see it twisting into a rage demon, which would go very badly for him. His barrier was almost depleted. He summoned his last magical strength as his clothes began to smoke and the floor around them, made brittle by the ice, cracked.

“Forever, Dorian,” the demon screamed, raising a boiling red claw.

“Oh do shut up,” Dorian said, and shoved a bolt of lightning point blank into its face.

The demon that was desire and rage erupted into mist and vapor. And then, so did the floor.

Dorian fell down into the dark.

The dark was damp and cold. Dorian was lying in an inch or two of water. He could hear the sound of waves beating against a shore, but in slow motion, like labored breathing. The dream of tides.

When he sat up he realized he was not alone.

They were ripples first, sounds in the dark, a presence more felt than seen. Dorian tried to summon fire, but he was too cold, too damp, and there was nothing left in him. Nothing but blood, and not as much of that as he would like.

Finally, he stood and rapped his staff against the ground, causing the focus crystal to spark and spit lighting, illuminating a small cone of tepid misery.

First, he saw that the water was blood.

Then, he saw that he was surrounded. Shapes crowded the gloom around him, their movement disturbing the water on all sides, the flickering light gleaming on dull eyes and hollow smiles.

And he understood what they were. What they meant to be.

He fumbled feebly for a lyrium potion as the dead elves rushed upon him, their collars, their wounds, their bands and bangles glinting in the dark as they clutched at him. He couldn’t see, but he knew, that they were marked as property, of Magister Pavus, of House Pavus, of Family Pavus. Property that could be spent as currency to pay the cost of power.

Though he knew they could not be what they appeared to be, that they must be spirits of little fears preying on his doubts, still he found himself gasping “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry” as they dragged him down into the blood and salt, rasping "Master" from slashed throats. 

The sea into which he fell eventually cast him up on a strange shore, alive, mostly whole, but ready, seeing a light on the beach, to take his rest beside another fearful dreamer.


	3. The Tale of the Champion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hawke has had enough of Death's shit.

Hawke’s companion wore a black shroud and smelled of rotting wood and sick livestock.

Remember when you used to joke, Death said. Even about the most terrible things.

“Yeah,” Hawke said. “I did, didn’t I? Why did I stop?”

Everyone died.

Hawke nodded. That sounded right.

Flickering shades haunted the barren fields lining the winding, interminable road on which they walked. Monstrous shapes lurched into the corners of her vision, gone as soon as she flinched away. Elves, mages, and Ferelden soldiers reached out for her, causing her to stumble. She never stopped walking. She never looked back.

Look, Death said.

Beside the path, just out of reach, Carver fought darkspawn, his boots, battered by the long retreat from Ostagar, creating puffs of dust like smoke as he moved, striking down one hurlock and pivoting to the next. Her little brother. It had been so long since she’d seen him. As he kicked a darkspawn loose from his blade, he looked up at her. He didn’t smile - had she ever given Carver cause to smile? - but there was, in his expression, something alive, something she’d forgotten. As the shadow fell over him, he looked strong. He looked like a Hawke.

She saw the ogre seize her brother, saw him struggle in its crushing grip before she squeezed her eyes shut.

Closing your eyes didn’t help Carver then, Death said. Why would it help now?

"Do you ever have anything constructive to say? I'm perfectly comfortable with silence from my travel companions."

Better to be your companion than your family, Death said.

"Rude," Hawke said.

Hawke’s feet crushed something soft. She looked down to find the path strewn with white lilies.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to see this again.”

Since when has that mattered? Death asked.

Hawke’s mother danced in a field of dead flowers. She moved her limbs with imperfect rhythm, a puppet with a drunk puppeteer. Even if Hawke closed her eyes, she could see the scars, her mother's face stitched onto unfamiliar skin, eyes dull with death.

It wasn’t fair. Her mother should have had a chance to be happy.

She was, for a moment, Death said. That probably should have made you suspicious.

“Stop it,” Hawke said.

After they'd moved on and Hawke regained her composure, she said, "It might surprise you to learn that I don't need anyone's help visualizing my regrets. I’ve had a lot of practice."

Death shrugged. The path stretched on.

Other dead flickered only at the corners of her vision, half-remembered faces of people who had died at her hands, who seemed to come into her life only to die. The fear, the pain in their faces the only impression left in her memory, detail drowned out by other, louder deaths.

By the side of the road, in the dust, Ketojan burned and the Viscount’s head rolled.

The Arishok bled from a dozen wounds, while Marethari swelled and bloomed into a being of pure defiance.

Orsino and Meredith battled, became monsters.

Anders and Fenris, when they appeared, as she had known they must, did nothing but look at her, waiting. Fenris looked grim; Anders, merely resigned. Hawke reached up to swipe at her eyes and smeared blood all over her face. Her hands dripped with it.

Always wondered where the streak came from, Death said.

“Clever,” Hawke said, but there was a break in her voice.

Fenris and Anders seemed to fall in step behind her, but she didn’t look back, afraid to see what other ghosts might have gathered in her wake. She didn’t know where she was leading them, and she didn’t know why they chose to follow.

They walked against a wind carrying fine dust and the smell of burning bodies. Hawke tasted the ashes of Kirkwall. She missed home.

She saw Bethany and Aveline overwhelmed by the war, the city falling to rogue Templars. Saw them marched up to the headsman’s block, first Aveline - “courage, Hawke,” she whispered - and then Bethany, tired, alone, and frightened. Saw them become two in a long line of Kirkwall’s defenders to pay with their lives for defying the Templars.

“Now I know you’re playing games,” Hawke said. “This never happened.”

How would you know? Death said. You left them behind.

“They can’t,” Hawke said, and stopped. “You can’t know for sure.”

I know you, Hawke. Everyone you care about dies.

When she saw Varric in the distance, her knees went weak and her stomach churned, but she wouldn’t let Death see her stumble.

Varric hummed with his whole body. Veins of red stuck out from his neck, and his face seemed cracked like baked clay.

“Let me tell you the tale of Bianca, Seeker,” Varric said, his voice echoing with a discordant tremor. He patted a small round lump beside him affectionately, bending his head to speak to it. “It’s a secret story. But who’s going to know? It’s just you and me here.” He met Hawke’s eyes and winked as she walked by. “Just you and me in the whole world.”

“That’s ridiculous. Varric he’s...he’s with me.”

Is he?, Death said. Seems to me you left him behind. Just like everyone else.

“That’s not...that’s not what happened,” Hawke said. “We were in the Fade. When would he have been infected with red lyrium? We were looking for...why can’t I remember?”

You make these promises, Hawke. To your mother, your siblings, your friends, complete strangers you’ve just met. You tell them everything will be all right, and then they die. No wonder Isabela left. Probably the only reason she’s still alive.

Hawke stopped walking.

“Who are you?” she said to Death.

Death reached up and pulled back her hood. Hawke stared.

“It’s only Merril’s face,” said the thing that looked like Merrill. “Your blood mage is gone, so much Fade dust by now.”

“How?”

The abomination laughed. It sounded just like her when it laughed.

“You left that girl alone in the middle of a war. She shed blood, she made bargains, and eventually she couldn’t pay the price because she was _weak_.”

Her face, body, and voice began to twist and warp.

“Heroes always leave the ones they love behind, as if distance is equivalent to safety,” it continued. “You’re like a disease, Hawke. Once they’ve met you, it’s too late. You ran off with the Wardens, with the Inquisition, because you’ve started to think that you’re some kind of hero who can save the world? You can’t even save the woman you love…”

The abomination trailed off, the twisted mouth moving but unable to say a word in the face of the Champion’s breathless laughter.

“Okay. Oh, Maker,” Hawke fanned her blood- and dust-streaked face. “Oh, you almost had me. Varric and the red lyrium, that was a risky maneuver, but you almost had me.” She wiped her eyes, laughing again. “I thought you were supposed to be inside my head. Merrill as an abomination? That was your coup de grace? Really?”

“I...this is…,” the abomination stammered.

“Bluff called, creature,” Hawke said. She reached over her shoulders and drew her daggers. “I’ll be cashing out now.”

“But this is impossible,” the abomination said, and its voice echoed in Hawke’s head and from every corner of the blasted landscape. “I see into your heart. You fear for her.”

“Of course I do,” Hawke said, advancing.  “I love her. But Merrill can take care of herself. Everyone she’s ever met has told her she can’t do the things she does, and you know what? She’s done them anyway. She’s still here, year after year, making the world a better place. Often just by being in it.”

Nightmare’s abomination roared and charged. Hawke rolled out of its way and plunged her daggers into its back. The creature snarled as it disintegrated into flakes of Fade and dreams.

“Your mistake was thinking that the people I love are my weakness,” Hawke said to the sky and the voice in her head. In the distance, she could see one of the many cracked mirrors that seemed to haunt the Fade. “They’re everything that’s strong about me.”

She walked across the dust, hoping for an open window elsewhere.


	4. The Warden, Blackwall

It hardly resembled a spider any longer, but Cadash hit it three or four more times just to be sure. When she looked up, shaking nightmare ichor from her maul and breathing heavily, she was alone.

“Seriously?” All around her the signs of battle were fading, evaporating into dreams and Fade dust. “I hate this place.”  The distant clouds seemed to be threatening to storm, rolling forward and snapping back in a repetitive loop. “Dreams are terrible. No wonder humans are all fucking crazy.”

She kicked at the dust where her squashed fearling puddle was turning into vapor and stomped further down the path, scanning the shadows for a sign of her companions.

“Blackwall! Hawke! Varric! Spirit pretending to be Divine Justinia V!” Her voice didn’t even seem to carry, as if the air found words too heavy. “Nightmare is shit! Fight me about it!”

Silence.

Cadash looked up at the sky. The rift still pulsed in the distance, the only beacon in the desolation of Nightmare’s realm.

“Well,” she said. “I hope everyone remembers which way we were going.”

Everything she’d read about the Fade or learned from her various arcane advisors was proving completely useless, probably because people weren’t supposed to visit while awake. The landscape should shift, influenced by the thoughts and emotions of those within it. And, according to Solas, it should be populated with curious spirits. Or demons, according to Vivienne. It was difficult for Cadash to imagine, because all she had ever seen was this foggy green wasteland full of slimy rock formations, imaginary spiders, and full table settings placed perpendicular to the ground.

If this was dreaming, the tall folks could keep it.

Her head came up at the sound of fighting further up the path. Cadash unslung her hammer and jogged up the incline and into a firestorm of burning wraiths, roaring demons, and, Ancestors, not more fucking _spiders_.

And in the middle was Blackwall, Warden shield up, axe slicing through spider limbs. He shouted inarticulate defiance, and Cadash sighed happily. She could watch that man fight all day. Like a Paragon carved from the living Stone.

But the rage demon threatened to singe his beard, and that got her blood up. With a roar of her own, she hurtled down into the bowl of rocks and fire, crashing right through the spiders and batting a wraith away with her maul. With a single overhand swing she brought the seething mass of liquid anger down to the ground, where she pounded it into a puddle while Blackwall protected her back and mopped up the little fears. The feeling of his presence behind her made her feel...a way she’d never had to describe before in her life. Like her heart could explode from her chest just like a demon bursting from the ground, in a shower of sparks and light and blood.

It was better she didn’t describe things. But the feeling did make her smile. It gave her strength.

As the last wraith faded and they patted out each other’s flames, they stopped and looked at each other affectionately.

“M’lady Inquisitor,” Blackwall said.

“Warden,” Cadash said. She liked the way his smile got hidden in his whiskers, but she always knew it was there.

“Where are the others?” Blackwall asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Cadash said. “I’m guessing Nightmare meant to scatter us, pick us off individually as we got lost in this shit. Seriously, you come here to dream?”

“Not here, I think,” Blackwall said. “My dreams are...different.”

“Oooh,” Cadash said. “Do tell.”

“Don’t tease,” Blackwall said. “Let a Warden keep his secrets.”

“No fun. Why do I even like you?” Cadash smacked him on the backside. “Let’s get a move on. We have to find the others.”

Trudging through the muck, harassed by fearlings and hostile spirits, the pair eventually came to a fork in the road.

“Flip a coin?” Cadash asked.

“Let’s take the high road,” Blackwall said.

“So noble.”

“If we take the high road, we may find a vantage, get the lay of our surroundings.”

“So wise.”

“You’re impossible.”

Cadash made a kiss at him, but he didn’t lean down for it like he usually did, instead looking up the path pensively. She wondered if it was the Fade or the Wardens that had him so down. She shook it off.

“High road it is, then,” she said, and began to hike.

“You’re handling being trapped and hunted by a powerful demon quite well,” Blackwall said as they stepped gingerly through the debris of ancient dreams.

“To be honest, I’m pretty disappointed,” Cadash said. “Everyone always describes nightmares as so terrifying, waking up breathless and sweating after being pursued by nameless terrors, unable to get away.” She kicked a tattered book, charred around the edges. “This is less frightening than a stroll in the Hinterlands.”

“You wish the nightmare were scarier,” Blackwall said. “The last time you were here, you were so terrified you lost your memory.”

“I didn’t lose it, that asshole stole it,” Cadash said. She sighed. “I thought it would at least be interesting. Josephine said once in a nightmare she attended a formal ball completely naked.” She sighed wistfully, glancing sidelong at Blackwall to gauge his reaction, but he only shook his head. Cadash clasped his hand. “You okay?”

“I...it’s nothing,” Blackwall said. “Just unsettled.”

“It’s been a long day of weird, awful shit,” Cadash said, giving his hand a squeeze. “But we’re going to get through it.”

After a moment, he squeezed her hand back, and they moved on.

At first, Cadash wanted to disregard it as hallucination, or some ambient feature of the fade, like the engravings, like the rocks that hung suspended in the air. But the sound of crying carried to her through the cyclopean ruins persistently, and there was a weight to it. It felt...real.

"Do you hear that?" she asked. Blackwall nodded.

"Demons playing games, maybe," he said.

"Let's check it out," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." Cadash grinned. "Besides, if it’s a trap, at least we won’t be bored."

There were no demons. There was only a child. Or the dream of a child, anyway, little more than a wisp in the dream of a bed. But it could cry, and it could whisper, and what it whispered was fear, of the dark, and of darkspawn. It had lost its only protection against the dark, and was afraid it would never sleep again.

"It'll be okay, little dreamer, hush little dreamer," Cadash said as she searched the crags and puddles for some kind of comfort. She knew there had to be something, there were piles of dream stuff everywhere, surely there would be something to stop a child from crying…

Blackwall cleared his throat. In his hand, he held a stuffed nug, a bit worn, a bit faded, but enough for the wisp of a fearful child. She kissed Blackwall's hands as she accepted the toy from him.

"You found it," the dreamer whispered as Cadash handed the toy over. The child faded from view in a burst of warmth and light and gratitude. Peace blew threw her mind. She hadn't even realized it was absent.

Cadash looked back at Blackwall, standing back wearing an uncertain expression. She loved the way his eyebrows knit together when he worried. She loved his whole furry face. She walked over and took his hands in hers.

"You want to know the real reason this place isn't getting to me?” Cadash patted his chest. “It's you. You make me good and you make me brave when I'm inclined to be neither. When I can't even count on the ground under my feet, I can rely on you."

Blackwall smiled broadly at that, and caressed her face, and she felt that absurd, bursting, happy feeling again.

Briars and brambles blocked the nearest path, so Blackwall lead the way, hacking through the thorns and holding back persistent branches so she could pass. Soon enough they heard more voices and sounds of a struggle.

“If we’re lucky, it will be one of the gang, and we’ll be that much closer to getting out of this pit,” Cadash said. Blackwall nodded grimly and chopped into the growth ahead.

On the other side of the undergrowth, there was a road. Beside the road, a group of men and women, deserters by the state of their ragged uniforms, mobbed and pummelled some unfortunate soul. Beyond them, on the road itself, a carriage lay on its side, surrounded by the bodies of guards and their horses. Two young boys struggled to pull themselves from the wreckage.

“Okay, I’ll disperse the mob, you go help the…” and the mob parted for a moment as they pulled their victim up from the ground. Cadash stared at him, and he, panic in his eyes, stared back.

“Blackwall…?” She looked up at the man beside her as he donned a chevalier’s mask, obscuring his entire face. He glanced at her briefly.

“No,” he said, and drawing his sword, advanced toward the boys.

Blackwall, her Blackwall, began to struggle in the grip of his captors, letting out a pained howl. Without another look at the impostor, Cadash threw herself at the deserters.

“Don’t hurt them,” Blackwall implored, as she struck them with pommel, fists, feet.

“They’re not real,” Cadash snarled as she smashed a woman holding one of Blackwall’s arm. The chevalier, plume bouncing with his step, approached the boys, who were desperately trying to free the older one’s leg.

With a yell, Blackwall punched free and spun away from the clutching grasp of the other deserters, sprinting toward the carriage. He wore no armor; his clothes were rags. One eye was nearly swollen shut. He snatched up an axe and a shield from a fallen guard as he ran.

Cadash, struggling against a half dozen desperate soldiers, could only watch as the chevalier stopped in front of the boys, looking down at them for a moment without moving. Then he lifted his sword.

As he brought it down, Blackwall threw himself in front of the blade. It rebounded off the shield with a clash, and Blackwall fell to his knees. The chevalier brought the sword down again, as Cadash kicked and spun with her maul, trying to shake the deserters loose.

Blackwall deflected the blade again, and counterattacked. He staggered to his feet and soon the two warriors were in a fierce duel over the two boys trapped by the carriage.

“Desa!” Blackwall shouted between blows. “The boys! Help them!”

“Help the-” she started to say, but a deserter hit her in the back. She swore and crushed him to the stone. She struck the woman who attacked her next with her pommel, repeatedly, and stomped on her until she stopped moving.

“Desa!”

“I’m _coming_!”

Smacking two more deserters out of the way, she rushed toward the carriage, skidding to a stop mere feet from where the two fighters continued to battle. She saw blood on the chevalier’s blade. “Blackwall!”

“The children,” he shouted again. “You have to...you have to save the children.”

Growling in frustration, Desa turned back to the carriage. The older boy’s leg had become pinned somehow. The struggle to kill the occupants of the carriage, maybe. She peered inside at the bodies of a dead man and woman, Orlesian nobles. Two more small children as well, riddled with arrows. But where were the attackers? She glanced back toward the deserters, but they were gone.

“Alright, kids,” Cadash said, squatting and wedging her fingers under the splintered wood. “When I lift, you pull, yeah?” The boys regarded her silently. “Yeah. Okay.” She lifted. The boys vanished.

She looked up in time to see Blackwall sweep the chevalier’s legs from under him. Reversing the axe, he dropped to his knees and smashed into the mask with the hammerpoint. He repeated this, snarling incoherently, until the masked man stopped jerking and was still.

Cadash set the carriage down and slowly walked over to where Blackwall kneeled, breathing raggedly. When she touched his shoulder, he started to his feet, axe raised. Seeing her, he relaxed, but only slightly.

“The boys? Are they…”

“Gone,” Cadash said. “They’re all gone. Everyone but him.” She nodded at the dead chevalier, his face a ruin of gilded metal and bloodied bone. “Who was he?”

“He was...a bad memory,” Blackwall said. He dropped the axe. “Perhaps best forgotten.”

Cadash looked up at her Warden, beaten bloody, dressed in rags, and carrying such a sorrow. She stepped into him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face against his stomach. After a moment, she felt him embrace her back.

“I will try every day until I die,” Blackwall said, “but I will never prove myself worthy of the love you show me, Desa Cadash.”

“Well, who asked you to?” Cadash said. “Come on, broody bear. Let’s get out of here.”

“Gladly,” Blackwall said. He turned his back on the dead chevalier with determination. “I think my kit is scattered over there somewhere.”

As the road faded away and they resumed their walk toward the rift, Blackwall said, “Don’t tell anyone I let you call me ‘broody bear.’”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone,” Cadash said. “Well, other than Varric.”

“Varric? Maker’s breath, he'll tell the whole bloody Inquisition.”

“Oh. Well, in that case I have told the whole Inquisition.”

In response he only stroked her hair affectionately, and her insides surged with a happiness that was only slightly tainted by having been felt twice before in the presence of a man who wasn’t who she thought he was.


	5. A Businessman

“Farewell and adieu, you Rivaini ladies,

Farewell and adieu, you ladies Rivain,

For I’ve been called away to Ferelden,

Never to see you ladies again”

Varric glanced up as the bell above the door rang, then returned his attention to what he was writing. Tentative steps approached the counter and stopped.

“What do you want, kid?” Varric sighed finally. The child squeaked and cleared her throat.

“My mom needs more medicine, Mr. Tethras,” she said. Varric arched an eyebrow. “Sir,” she added.

Varric sighed again. He blotted the latest figures and closed the ledger.

“The price has gone up,” he said, standing and taking a ring of keys from his hip.

“Up? But it was already so high…”

“That’s how value works, kid,” Varric said. “Supply, demand, blah blah blah.” He set the bottle on the counter. “50 silvers.”

“But that’s half a sovereign,” stammered the child.

“Glad you know your figures,” Varric said. The kid hopelessly recounted her money, as if it would magically multiply on its own.

“I only have 20,” she said quietly.

“Well,” Varric said. He pulled the bottle from the counter.

“Wait,” the kid said desperately. Varric waited.

“My mom needs that medicine.”

“I’m sure other people need this medicine, too,” Varric said. “People who can pay.”

Tears stood out in the kid’s eyes. Varric sighed again.

“Tell you what,” he said, stroking his beard. “Give me the 20 you have, and I’ll hold it for you until you get the rest.”

“How?”

“Same as anyone else, kid,” Varric said. “Anyway you can.”

The kid stared at him for a few moments. But soon enough her shoulders slumped and she handed over the coins, as he’d known she would.

The bell dinged again almost as soon as the door shut behind the kid.

“Look, I’m not a charity- Knight-Commander Samson.” Varric swallowed. “I’m honored.”

“Don’t waste my time, Tethras,” Samson said. The two Red Templar Knights behind him rumbled and hummed. “You know why I’m here.”

“Of course,” Varric said, hurrying from behind the counter with his keys.

“Bodahn,” he called. “Bodahn, where are you, you senile nug-picker?”

“Here, Mr. Tethras, sir,” the older dwarf said as he emerged from the stockroom. “Right here, sir.” Bodahn froze at the sight of Samson and the Templars.

“Mind the shop,” Varric said. “I’m in a meeting.”

“As you say, sir,” Bodahn said. He bowed low as the Templars filed past into the back. “Your servant, sir.”

The Templars followed Varric silently as he unlocked doors and lead them down to the basement vault. They waited at the stairs while he disabled the traps warding the hallway.

“It’s good that you’re taking security so seriously, Tethras,” Samson said.

“I’ve learned to protect my investments, Knight-Commander,” Varric said. “It’s an uncertain world.”

He depressed the combination of plates to shift the heavy stone vault door.

Inside, surrounded by the wealth of House Tethras, knelt a woman. Her dark hair stuck to her forehead, and her already angular features were hollowed further by deprivation. She seemed to barely have enough energy to lift her head, but when she did, even Samson flinched.

“Cassandra Pentaghast,” the Templar breathed. “The last Seeker.”

“As promised,” Varric said. He avoided the woman’s eyes. She always looked as though she were accusing him of something.

“Praise the Elder One,” Samson said, and the Templar Knights responded with a droning gargle. Varric offered a half-hearted salute.

“Is it true the Seekers are resistant to red lyrium?” Varric asked.

“Don’t be absurd,” Samson said, looking at him sharply. “You have more important things to worry about than blasphemous gossip. I want her ready to be moved tonight.”

“Tonight?” Varric glanced at the Seeker and flinched. “You’re not taking her now?”

“Parade a Seeker through the streets in the middle of the day?” Samson barked. “I knew you were a coward, dwarf, but I didn’t think you were stupid.” He regarded the kneeling woman with a sneer. “Let her wait a while longer. Let her pray to her nonexistent god and think on what’s in store for her.”

The vault resealed and the traps reset, Varric escorted the Templars back upstairs.

“I expect you to redouble your efforts to find the Aequitarians,” Samson said. “The continued existence of the so-called free mages is an affront to the Elder One.”

“I doubt they’re a threat anymore,” Varric said. “As far as I can tell they just want to be left al-”

He grunted as Samson grabbed a fistful of shirt and chest hair while shoving him against the counter.

“Don’t get soft on me, dwarf,” Samson said. “Whatever personal feelings you might have about Bethany Hawke, she is an apostate, rebel, and heretic, and she must be purged from our New World. Are we clear?”

Varric nodded weakly.

Samson let go and followed his Knights to the door. He looked back with a smile.

“Be ready, Master Tethras,” he said. The door clicked shut behind him.

Varric leaned against the counter catching his breath and rubbing his bruised chest until he realized Bodahn was watching him.

“Go inventory the new shipment of spices,” he said. “Now.” Bodahn bowed and left.

Varric slowly made his way behind the counter and opened his ledger. The flower he’d been doodling in the margin when the kid came in had smudged. With a sigh, he shut the book again, and reached beneath the counter. He regarded the bottle, unlabeled low-quality glass, weighing it in his hand. He’d barely started this one. If he drank it all in one go, maybe he’d be unconscious until dark.

The bell dinged again.

“We’re closed,” he said without looking up.

“Varric?”

A tall, pale human with black hair and blue eyes looked at him expectantly.

“Do I know you, human?” Varric said. The human frowned, looking concerned.

“I’m...Marian,” she said. She looked around at the shop. “What are you doing here?”

“Drinking,” Varric said. “And closing early. Now get out, or I’ll call the guard.”

The human looked over her shoulder, but at what, Varric couldn’t see. She had some kind of red streak over her nose. It looked like blood. He began to wonder if she were crazy.

“You run a shop,” she said.

“Obviously,” he replied.

“Aren't you a troublemaker?” Marian said. “Some might call you an adventurer?”

“I’m a businessman,” Varric said. “I accompanied a few of my brother’s merchant expeditions when I was younger. Hardly adventures. There’s no percentage in that kind of trouble.”

The human walked over to lean on the counter, and Varric placed his hand on the flanged mace he kept by the ledger.

“All right, businessman,” Marian said. “How much for a story?”

“A story? Do I look like a bard to you?”

The human shrugged.

“All right, listen,” he said, getting angry. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I don’t get in trouble, I don’t have adventures, and I don’t tell stories anymore.”

He stopped, and he and the human looked at each other. When he shook his head to clear it, a sovereign was on the counter top.

“Tell me a story, Varric,” Marian said, and the way she said it sounded so familiar it made his heart lurch. He coughed a bit and stared at the gold coin.

“I don’t know any stories,” he said, quietly.

“What about The Tale of the Champion?” she said.

“Not familiar.”

Marian looked vaguely wounded again. She set another coin on the counter.

“Why don’t you make something up?”

Varric laughed. “You’re placing a high premium on my storytelling without ever having heard one.”

“Maybe I have,” Marian said, smiling. “Maybe I’ve heard tales of your ability to spin tales.”

Varric considered the gold coins while something stirred deep in his mind. The human glanced over her shoulder again. Then she set a bag of coins on the countertop.

“20 sovereigns,” she said. “For the story of Bianca.”

Varric stared at her, and looked at the coins in a panic. He reached for them and then pushed the entire pile away.

“I only know one story,” he said. “There was a young girl who fled from a Blight with her mother and her...her older sister, I can’t remember her name. This girl, the younger one, she was...she was a mage, and she had to leave her home behind and go with her family to a city where the Templars ruled mages without mercy. She was always scared in those days, but that’s what made her so brave. It was up to her to save her family…”

“Bethany?” Marian said.

“Bethany Hawke,” Varric said. “Sunshine I called her…”

He stopped and stared at Marian.

“Hawke,” he said again. Marian smiled at him, eyes gone blurry.

“Varric Tethras,” she said, wiping away a tear.

“Marian Hawke,” he said, and he looked down and the counter was the dream of a table and the shop was a desolate beach with a gray-green sky, and the human was his best friend, kneeling in a nightmare to help him find himself.

“Hawke,” he said again, hoarsely, and she pushed the table aside, gold coin spilling into the water, and he collapsed forward into her arms.

“It’s all right, Varric,” Hawke said, patting his back. “It’s going to be all right.”

Varric felt like he would never stop trembling. He pressed his head against Hawke’s chest.

“I did…” he said and began again, “I was…”

“Never happened,” Hawke said, her cheek resting on top of his head. “It all right now. It never happened.” Weakly, Varric nodded.

He pulled back and looked at Hawke’s shining face. She kissed his forehead and grinned. Over her shoulder, Varric could see Dorian, looking tired.

“Hey Sparkler,” Varric said as Hawke helped him to his feet. “Didn’t you used to have a hat?”

“A more pressing question, Master Tethras, is what in Andraste’s name is that on your face?”

Varric reached up, brushing at what had moments ago been a poorly maintained beard. His hand came away with a sticky residue like tree sap.

“Well, that's awful,” Varric said. "I think I need to be sick."

“Please do. I know I felt much better afterwards,” Dorian said. “I don’t advise looking too long in the water, however. It starts to get ideas.”

When he had finished washing his face in a murky pool that smelled of night sweats and sleep paralysis, Hawke handed him Bianca.

“You found her,” he said, feeling emotional all over again.

“She lead us right to you," Hawke said.

Varric pat the crossbow affectionately, then did a quick check for breaks or malfunctions. Dorian and Hawke waited patiently for him to finish.

“Ready?” Hawke said when he at last slung Bianca over his shoulder.

“Right behind you, Hawke,” Varric said.

As they headed toward the light shining like a beacon in the near distance, Hawke said, “You know, we should talk about why you dream so much about my sister.”

“I don’t dream, Hawke,” Varric said, smiling. “But I do think of Sunshine from time to time, when I need to remember that there’s good in the world.”

“She is good, isn’t she?” Hawke said. “Still, I’m head of the family, so I expect to be fully informed if you decide to come courting.”

“I’ll run all my love letters by you first,” Varric said.

“Good,” Hawke said. “Don’t write anything that’ll make me blush. I imagine Aveline’ll probably want to have a look at them too.”

“You know,” Varric said. “Now that I think of it, I think Bethany might enjoy being single?”

“And here I was looking forward to attending a wedding before the end of the world,” Dorian sighed.


	6. Unspeakable Horrors/Nightmare's End

“I was having a perfectly wonderful chat with the First Warden, when up saunters the Champion of Kirkwall carrying a vial of blood that she found in a graveyard, and the Warden looks at her, says ‘You’ve saved us,’ and disappears.”

“A vial of blood,” Blackwall said.

“From a graveyard,” Dorian repeated. To Hawke he said, “You, madam, have a macabre personality and a dreadful sense of timing.” Hawke bowed.

Cadash and Neria were looking up the last hill toward the beacon of light.

“It has to be the Divine,” Neria said.

“A spirit who looks like her, anyway,” Cadash said. “Could be a trap, but one thing I haven’t seen Nightmare do is conjure a proper light.”

“Nightmares thrive in shadows.”

“Everyone’s full of creepy insights today,” Cadash said. She called down to the others. “Come on, everyone, I don’t want to have to fight all the demons my-”

INQUISITOR

“Balls,” Cadash said, and was sucked into the earth.

Blackwall lunged toward her, but too late. The ground where the Inquisitor stood appeared undisturbed.

“Maker’s tears,” Dorian swore. “It never ends.”

“We have to find her,” Blackwall said.

“Where do we even look?” Hawke said.

“She could be anywhere,” Varric said, looking back the way they’d come.

“Maybe the Divine will have an idea,” Neria said.

“We’re not going anywhere without the Inquisitor,” Blackwall growled, and just when everyone started talking at once, a shredding sound erupted from the rocks beside the path, and Desa Cadash emerged hammer-first from a sticky, sucking tear in the rock face, kicking slime from her boots.

She plucked unidentifiable viscera from her hair as she caught her breath, then looked up at the staring faces of her companions.

“Spiders,” she said. “Just spiders all the way down.”

And she started up the path.

 

Blackwall hesitated and she almost kicked him. She pulled his face down and kissed him instead.

“Go,” Cadash insisted. “I’m right behind you.”

Blackwall frowned, but she gave him a push and turned back to help Hawke and Warden Surana, still woozy from Nightmare’s attack. The wind created by the rift blew her hair in her eyes, and she shook her head, reaching out a hand to steady the Warden. She gestured impatiently as Hawke and Neria stopped moving, their eyes wide. With a sinking feeling, she turned to find the enormous arachnoid form of Nightmare filling the horizon. She backed down the slope to join the two heroes.

“Well, there are three of us,” Cadash said. “We’re all pretty much legends here. We should be able to take it, right?”

“I’m afraid I don’t like our chances,” Hawke said. Her jaw tightened. “Go. I’ll cover you.”

“No,” Neria said. “You were right. The Grey Wardens caused this. A Warden must-”

“A Warden must help them rebuild,” Hawke said. “That’s your job. Corypheus is mine.”

Neria laughed, almost gaily. “You say that like I’m giving you a choice.”

“Neria…” Cadash said.

“Tell Leliana to take care of my dog,” Neria said, rushing toward the Nightmare.

“Neria!” Hawke shouted.

Bright bursts of frost, brighter than anything else in Nightmare’s realm, impacted on the beast’s eyes, and even though its scream of outrage seemed deafening, still it couldn’t quite drown out Warden Surana’s cry of “For the Grey Wardens!” as she rushed among the creature’s legs, hurling ice and lightning into its underbelly.

As its legs withdrew from the path, Cadash tugged Hawke forward, and together they ran for the Rift. She pushed Hawke through, then looked back. The Warden was a bright spot on the desolate face of the Fade, fighting with staff and spell against a monster as old as memory. Before Nightmare’s bulk blocked her view, Cadash could hear the moment echoing in the Fade. Becoming something brighter.

Inquisitor Cadash turned away, and passed through the rift.


End file.
